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Are Blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) defending their nests also calling for help from their neighbours?

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Abstract

One hypothesized function of conspicuous mobbing of intruders by bird nest owners is to attract neighbouring birds (“calling for help” hypothesis) or third-party predators (“attract the mightier” hypothesis). These may help the nest owners by distracting and/or attacking the mobbed intruder. To date, these hypotheses have been studied solely during the mobbing of predators. Here, for the first time, I have studied mobbing attraction in the context of brood parasitism. I experimentally tested the Blackcap (Sylvia atricapilla), a small passerine with a highly aggressive and conspicuous nest defence behaviour. I elicited the aggressive responses of Blackcaps by presenting stuffed dummies of the brood parasitic Common Cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) and controls near their nests. At 32% of the nests (n = 75), the responses of the Blackcaps to dummies attracted up to 15 birds per trial from 21 passerine species. Most of the attracted birds were heterospecifics and rarely participated in mobbing; thus the “calling for help” hypothesis was not supported. No potential predators of the Cuckoo were attracted despite them living in the study area and despite prolonged mobbing by Blackcaps; thus rejecting the “attract the mightier” hypothesis. I argue that this hypothesis is unlikely to apply to typical avian predators during nest predation acts because these only last for several seconds. The number of attracted birds was a positive function of the owner’s intensity of nest defence as measured by the rates of alarm calling but not visual cues (rates of attacks). Suitable and unsuitable Cuckoo hosts did not differ in their behaviour in the vicinity of defended nests. The observed pattern of the positive correlation between the intensity of nest defence and the number of attracted birds is most likely a proximate by-product of the conspicuous nest defence by Blackcaps (but may well be adaptive for recruiting neighbours themselves). Thus, the mobbing behaviour of the Blackcap is directed towards the brood parasite and not towards other audience predators or potential recruits to the mob.

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Acknowledgments

I thank two anonymous referees, S. A. Gill, M. E. Hauber, I. Krams, V. Pavel, and V. Remeš for comments on the draft. I am especially grateful to E. Curio for his extensive and insightful comments and to V. Pavel for helping me with the literature. I am indebted to M. Čapek for providing breeding density data and to D. Campbell for correcting the language. I was supported by grants MSM6198959212 and GACR 206/03/D234.

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  1. Department of Zoology, Palacký University, tř. Svobody 26, 771 46, Olomouc, Czech Republic

    Tomáš Grim

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  1. Tomáš Grim
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Correspondence to Tomáš Grim.

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Communicated by T. Friedl.

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Grim, T. Are Blackcaps (Sylvia atricapilla) defending their nests also calling for help from their neighbours?. J Ornithol 149, 169–180 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10336-007-0257-7

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